Spring training stadiums continue to bloom in the Arizona desert

Whoever dubbed it the Cactus League, while not exactly overextending the imagination, can now be credited with great foresight.

Like a saguaro that hasn't tasted water in months, spring training in Arizona continues to grow while everything around it suffers from a global economy gone dry as desert dirt. This year the Cactus League adds two teams relocated from Florida, including the exalted and long-coveted Los Angeles Dodgers, and boosts its exhibition schedule from 172 games to a whopping 245.

“We call it the 'spring-training stimulus package' for Arizona,” said Robert Brinton, Cactus League president. “We may break spring-training records that might stand forever, or at least for many, many, many years.”

Brinton, also executive director of the Mesa (Ariz.) Convention and Visitors Bureau, quickly noted his own forecast was likewise stating the obvious. To better facilitate the return of the World Baseball Classic, whose semifinal rounds are at Petco Park and finals are at Dodger Stadium, spring training has been extended by a week.

While business parks across the country are shutting down, ballparks costing tens of millions of dollars are popping up in the sandy sprawl west of Phoenix. As it was, the Cactus League was a thriving concern, drawing 1.31 million fans last year.

Having departed Tucson for Florida's Grapefruit League in 1993, the Cleveland Indians are returning to Arizona with the construction of a new facility just off Interstate 10 in Goodyear. And after years of trying to wiggle their way out of legendary (and ancient) Dodgertown in Vero Beach, Fla., the Dodgers are tenants of spiffy new Glendale digs they'll share with the Chicago White Sox, who are moving from Tucson and making life easier for snowbirds migrating from the Windy City.

From a sheer baseball standpoint, the arrival of the Dodgers also means that every team in both West Divisions can now be found in the Cactus League. The (then New York) Giants, along with the Indians, were the first to set up camp in Arizona in the immediate aftermath of World War II. The other members of the modern NL West – Padres, Colorado Rockies and Arizona Diamondbacks – have been Cactus League members since the days they were born.

Even with the expanded schedule, the Dodgers and Padres play each other only twice in Arizona, at Peoria on March 3 and again at Glendale on March 29.

“From our standpoint, it's good to have a chance to see where (the Dodgers) stand throughout the spring, especially since we open with four games against them,” Padres General Manager Kevin Towers said. “We have scouts in Florida, but when the Dodgers were back there, there still was a bit of the unknown about them. Now we can gauge where they're at as we approach the season, things like how they're lining up their rotation.”

From a logistical standpoint, those still clinging to the notion of spring training as the idyllic escape might want to stand out of the way, lest they get run over by hordes of Angelenos who have waited decades to see the Boys in Blue play games in March.